Suggestions for non-astringent persimmons for New England, zone 6

mamuang_gwMay 11, 2012

Hello,

Once I've found out that my zone is upgraded from zone 5 to zone 6, I like to try growing persimmons. I've read many posts here about the trees. I still think I need some suggestions to find the persimmon trees that fit the criteria I am looking for:

Non-astringent - I like sweet, crunchy fruit. I'd love to eat persimmon that is not so soft. It seems all astringet type, you have to wait until it's fully ripe and soft.

Will survive zone 6 without protection: It seems the astrigent type is hardier but I look for the non-astringent that would survive zone 6.

The non-astringent kaki persimmons will still be a bit 'iffy' for you, if you've just been 'moved' from zone 5 to 6 - but if you don't mind 'pushing the envelope', with the knowledge, up front, that your experiment may fail - I'd say, try planting some - but be aware that a typical MA winter may take them out.
Ichi-Ki-Kei-Jiro has survived and fruited for me here in zone 6. Izu is reported to be early-ripening, but I've not grown or fruited it here. Maekawa Jiro and Matsumoto Wase Fuyu may be earlier ripening, as well - but they've not fruited here yet.

Lately the winters here have been mild and so not great tests for the hardiness of Asian persimmons. The trees all survive, so it's unclear which are the most hardy. There's some thought that the relative vigor of a tree after withstanding a trying winter can be used as a gauge for its relative hardiness. Given these mild winters, I don't know how useful my observations would be, but of the varieties of nonastringent persimmons in my orchard, Tam Kam is clearly the most vigorous. This one is of Korean origin and is known to be one of the more cold hardy. varieties.

Thank you you alll for your responses. I went back and read as many relevant old treads on persimmon I could find until my eyes crossed!!

I checked the following nurseries: Edible Landscapting, Burntridge, Womack, England Orchard, Bay Laurel and Just Fruits and Exotics. Just Fruits has the largest collection of non-stringent (and astringent for that matter).

I am interested in Gwang Yang, Tam Kam, Jiro, Ichi-ki-kei-Jiro. I probably will pick two out of this list.

This year is too late to order so I have a year to think about it or change my mind!!

England propagates Shin which is supposed to be non-astringent sometimes but wasn't for me in Z6. The thing died on me over winter, and I brought it into my well house where it never gets much under freezing but is not heated. Too bad, it is a very prolific producer of good fruit and extraordinarily precocious as well. Probably over fruited for it's own good.

Several months ago we have talked about how hardy Shin na da was. But your tree died in protected place and the temp only down around 0 degree F. That is good to know, so it is not as hardy as Greatwall, Sheng, Kyung sun ban si, Saijo, Ichi kei ki jiro ,Rossyanka, Nikita's Gift, 20th century, Gwang Yang, and Hao River. All these can handle to at least -10F.

Hardiness is not that straight forward as simple bottom number. -10F for Kaki is pretty optimistic, and I can't say as my tree's have never been exposed to that low. I can say that several you listed I have either lost or had severe damage to on May 12th by a temp of around 28F. Of the ones you listed my Hao River and Sheng I am still hoping are not totally dead above the graft, but no bud showing as of yet, but I do still scratch some green on the lower bark of the main trunk. Saijo, Ichi kei ki jiro are budding out again without too much wood loss. Nikita's Gift and Greatwall managed to keep some leafs intact but as well took a pretty good hit and lost some wood. Rosseyanka just had some leafs burnt but fared the best by a noticeable margin. I have I believe 17 cultivars and was trying to re-assess damage yesterday. Many of the these trees have seen high single digit or low teens when fully dormant in winter, but this spring's extended warm weather followed by a few hours on below freezing has really set me back.

Sorry to here about the late frost damaged on your Kakis and Hybrids. Late frost is terrible for leafed out persimmons. I spoke with Jerry Lehman about that subject about month ago and he told me most persimmons will rebud but no fruit for that year. I was lucky that my Nikita's Gift, Giant Hana Fuyu and Ichi Kei ki Jiro were not damage due to the micro climate of growing 5 feet from the south side of my house and they are loaded with baby fruits right now. My 3 yrs old Rossyanka was growing on north side of the house and got nailed by late frost of 29 F. All the buds turned brown and now it recovered and leafed out nicely and I even see 2 flowers on one of the branch. I believe the list I mentioned above can hold true to their hardiness as long as they stayed dormant during the winter. Once they leafed out and late frost will damage and the true hardiness is out of the window.

Tony, my Shin didn't die from cold exposure. It was a small tree that I damaged by using the wrong potting mix for it and transplanting it after it began to grow a couple of years ago. I didn't realize how sensitive persimmons could be as I was simply moving it to a larger pot and didn't disturb the roots much. It went into shock and dropped all it's fruit.

I didn't want to risk the tree in our winters until it got some size but I managed to kill it before it got there. I will try that variety again but change my management. The quality of the persimmons was very good- I have a Saijo that I've managed the same way that is 15 years old and never fruited but the Shin fruited in its second year. Next time I'll remove flowers until it's stronger.

I miss-stated the date it was April 12th not May 12th. Some of them I actually am afraid I lost the entire above tree above graft. I am as well fearful that those that do come out may develop Sudden Death Syndrome. Did they ever actually determine what the cause of SDS was? Seems I read that often trees that succumb to it had prior taken cold damage, and there was thought it was related. I can handle losing a year of fruit, just really hate losing trees it has me re-thinking things that after the mildest winter I can remember I have had more cold damage then I have ever had.

I would wait and see how many of them come back to life. The one that did not make it than next spring use bark graft to re-graft on the rootstocks. You can email me next Feburary and I will give you the Kaki scionwoods that I have. So far all the new Kaki grafts took: Sheng, Giombo, Honan Red, Kyung san ban si, Saijo, Greatwall,and Tam Kam. Plus the full grown trees: Nikita's Gifts, Giant Hana Fuyu, Rossyanka, and Ichi kei ki Jiro. About SDS, Lucky P. stated might be Maganese (Mn) deficiency.

Yes right now pretty much wait and see mode. I have/had over 30 Persimmon in ground. I had pretty much kept the trees one cultivar to a tree until this year when I grafted on branches of a few trees, as I have run out of space for them and still several cultivar I wanted to trial. Thanks for the offer of scion maybe next season we can swap some. I had just doubled my cultivars this year with 12 from Just Fruits and Exotics, but those just in ground this spring in general don't show any more damage than the 4 year trees.

As I understand it, KSD is most likely caused by a virus present in either the rootstock or the scion. If a plant is infected and is a vulnerable variety, and that plant is growing in the East, sooner or later it is going to be subjected to some harsh temperature experience of one type or another and subsequently the disease is likely to manifest. So if some trees started to show signs of KSD, I'd be resigned to the notion that it was predestined, a bad thing just waiting to happen. It might be a good idea to be rather choosy about the sources of your scionwood, maybe only taking wood from trees known to have withstood temperature stresses without showing any signs of KSD. I would think another good practice to reduce the impact of KSD damage would be to avoid multi-grafting persimmon trees, as it just takes one infected scion to ruin the whole tree.

Creek, there is little agreement on the source of KSD and I personally am in the not a virus camp. The study usually cited is by Reighard for pro-virus, but he is currently anti-virus. It always exhibits itself when grafted onto virginiana stock and my feeling is it is a latent graft incompatibility issue. Graft incompatibility of kaki on virginiana is well known. I have some virginiana seedlings I grafted on and two of them refuse to cooperate, they just don't want to accept any grafts long-term. I am glad that most of my kakis are on lotos.

I am pretty sure all my trees are grafted to Virginiana, certainly the ones I have grafted myself, and the majority of my purchased trees. What is a good source for Lotus rootstock? I have not seen any indication of KSD yet, as the cold damage is recent, but I have read that trees affected have frequently had severe cold damage preceding. Most of the scion I have grafted was sourced from U.C. Davis and I doubt that location the trees have been cold tested.

Scott, I've seen KSD on Izu and Korean and other cultivars topgrafted on Great Wall on virginiana rootstock where the Great Wall showed no evidence of disease and is thriving. This observation favors infection of some kind over a compatibility issue unless there's an incompatibility with Great Wall which seems unlikely.

Creek, the whole KSD thing is clear as mud. It always seems to be a problem on virginiana seedling rootstock and these seedlings should not have virus in them since they were grown from seed. I think a more likely explanation is the way virginiana feeds some scions is not to their liking in terms of whats in the sap and how it flows. So your Great Wall was OK with it but the guys on top were not. It could also be a virus, but it should be the scion giving it to the uninfected roots and not the other way around. I have never head of a virus that infects seeds.

cousinfloyd,
KSD will typically affect the susceptible kaki graft and leave the virginiana rootstock unaffected. It is interesting in the case that I mentioned that the Great Wall portion of the tree was completely unaffected while 5 grafts showed signs of the disease. Cultivars that show resistance to KSD are also the most cold hardy, so it is not surprising that Great Wall, which is arguably the most cold hardy kaki, has not shown evidence of disease. By the way KSD is somewhat of a misnomer - yes, sometimes it kills the graft in short order, but it can also manifest as a chronic disease with initial recovery and then reappearance the following spring. To make the diagnosis look for initially normal vigor and growth of the kaki graft in early spring followed by ceasing of growth, blackening of the vasculature and loss of leaves from the time shortly before bloom to somewhat afterwards. The process affects the most recent growth first. Then the disease process just stops, some say because of warmer weather. If the graft hasn't been too badly damaged it may then recover at that point from the basal parts, again with normal growth for the remainder of the season until it reappears the following spring.

Scott,
As you say I don't think the virus affects the seeds, but certainly virginiana rootstock could have acquired a viral infection as a seedling. In the case I mentioned I believe the source of the infection was one of the grafted scions, several of which came from the West coast and one, Izu, from the Davis repository. I believe the disease spread from the infected scion throughout the tree and then affected the other susceptible grafts.

For what its worth it seems the varieties aside from aforementioned great wall that are resistant to SDS are hana fuyu, saijo, smiths best (giboshi), and sheng. Of these only hana fuyu is non astringent. I have lost several to SDS including ichi ke keijiro and gwang yang. All of my persimmons have been grafted on virginiana.

Creek, the thing that just doesn't add up about your model is why it only arises on virginiana rootstock. It both requires a virus to be latent in many scions and for it to be latent except when grafted on virginiana. This is because it is not likely that seedlings would get infected before they were grafted on. I do know that some rootstocks are not tolerant of some latent viruses, for example G16 is very sensitive to some viruses and they can kill the stock. So, while your explanation could be correct it seems unlikely. It wouldn't be hard to test, do the virus heat removal procedure on a "known bad" scion and compare it with the non-removed scion on 10-20 virginiana seedling grafts. The graft incompatibility theory is also a bit strange because usually interstems solve incompatibility, but it is not surprising that there could be exceptions to that -- the scion/root relationship is complex, the scion in fact "pulls" nutrients from the roots by sending signals to the root (which I know almost nothing about); it could be a problem with that signaling mechanism.

Fruitcraz,
It seems you would need to worry much less about these varieties dying from SDS. Are these varieties immune? I dont know but I have never lost one of these varieties myself and from studies I remember reading about in GA sometime back these were listed as resistant.

Scott, may I ask what is your source for your assertion that KSD does not appear on kakis grafted on lotus rootstock. It would seem to me that as KSD is more prevalent in the East and outside of maybe Florida, lotus isn't much used as a rootstock in the East that there would be less chance on that basis alone of kaki on lotus trees developing the disease. But even if virginiana proves to be necessary for the activation of the virus and the expression of the disease, it need not be the source of the infection. The virus may be endemic in kakis, not restricting their proliferation until the disease activating conditions are met.So natural selection would not preclude a high prevalence of the latent virus in the available scionwood.

Gwang Yang, Tam Kam should be the good non astringent varieties, perhaps hardy in zone 6 (by literature). but I have no personal experience with these. Are korean NA compatible enough with D. lotus rootstock? Some none astringent could have problem with it.

Creekweb, I just noticed your KSD virginiana question to me above. I don't recall exactly where I read that now but there were several mentions; one I recall is something about how virginiana may be inhibiting uptake of manganese and lotos not. You are correct that the possibility of a virus is not ruled out by the evidence we have today.

What I have read, Hana Fuyu needs pollinator to have better crop, however fruits are produced also from female flowers by parthenocarpy, but not so many. Any suggestion about PCNA varieties suitable for "colder" climate? Kyung San Ban Si has pretty large fruits and is cold hardy but unfortunately is astringent type.

Hi,
I am located in Dedham, MA about 8 miles outside of Boston and was hoping some of you could share your success growing persimmons since last year. I would like to plant both astringent and non-astringent varieties.
If you could plant perhaps 4 trees, which would you recommend for hardiness and fruit quality? Taking pollination into account? I have a long south facing wall (both house and garage that I can use for a little extra protection.) It looks like we got bumped to zone 6b.

I am only interested in non-astringent. I think they are fewer non-astringent persimmon varieties that we could push an envelope. I am in zone 6a next to Worcester.

After all the reading, I've planned to buy 20th Century, Tam Kam and Gwang Yang. By the time I got around to order, Gwang Yang and Tam Kam were sold out. 20th century has not been grafted. I'll order them in the fall this year. I probably will order from Just Fruits and Exotics and/or England Orchard.

There are more choices for non astringent. You can check the catalogs of those two nurseries.

I think you will have more success than me since your zone is a bit warmer. I plan to protect the trees as done by Tonytran. Check out his old posts. It's impressive.